Chinese Chinoiserie Style, Love it or Hate it
RH owns a Chinese Chinoiserie style coffee table. The top shows a startling scene of ancient Chinese Court life composed of six applied carved semi-precious stone figures. One figure wields …
Barnaby Conrad: A Friend to Writers
OS asked for a dollar estimate for her Barnaby Conrad signed lithograph. When an artist is a huge personality with a legendary past, “comparable sales,” prices paid for past work, …
The ORANGE: Perception, Color, and Language
The color orange, a newer color term, is based upon the 14th century European discovery of the fruit. In the foothills of the Himalayas in the 13th century, Persian traders …
Hodge’s Hats
PP confessed to a weakness for vintage hats. For the past ten years she paid $300 a month to store her collection of 1950s hats. She sent me a picture …
William Caxton Facsimile Edition of The Canterbury Tales
GG sent me a beautiful leather-bound book, The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400), The William Caxton Facsimile Edition. Cambridge University Press published only 500 of these in 1973. She …
Bust of Vigée Le Brun
LM sent me a photo of a thirty inch tall terra cotta bust of a gorgeous young French female of the late 18th century. Her beauty is classic even today: …
Wrestling with a Creative Block
For some time I’ve wanted to write about the devastating creative artist’s BLOCK, sometimes referred to as writer’s block. What do you do when you, a creative person, feel …
The Zen of Publishing
HG scored this book at a flea market. Daisetz Suzuki’s Zen and Japanese Culture – a classic printed in hundreds of languages. Bollingen Foundation, known for publishing books of significant impact …
Picture This: Casino de Monte-Carlo
DD sent me a seafront shot of what she thinks is a view of a church and a bathhouse. Note both sections of the photo. I searched for a similar …
Big Numbers: Prices Paid for Masterpieces in 2023
$14.2 billion!! That’s the total income for fine art Christie’s and Sotheby’s generated through auctions and private sales. The figure shows a drop of 13% from 2022 at $16.4 billion. …